Sepimostat

Due to COVID-19, the whole world is undergoing a devastating situation, but treatment with no such drug candidates still has been established exclusively. In that context, 69 diverse chemicals with potential SARS-CoV-2 3CL^pro inhibitory property were taken into consideration for building different internally and externally validated linear (SW-MLR and GA-MLR), non-linear (ANN and SVM) QSAR, and HQSAR models to identify important structural and physicochemical characters required for SARS-CoV-2 3CL^pro inhibition. Importantly, 2-oxopyrrolidinyl methyl and benzylester functions, and methylene (hydroxy) sulphonic acid warhead group, were crucial for retaining higher SARS-CoV-2 3CL^pro inhibition. These GA-MLR and HQSAR models were also applied to predict some already repurposed drugs. As per the GA-MLR model, curcumin, ribavirin, saquinavir, sepimostat, and remdesivir were found to be the potent ones, whereas according to the HQSAR model, lurasidone, saquinavir, lopinavir, elbasvir, and paritaprevir were the highly effective SARS-CoV-2 3CL^pro inhibitors. The binding modes of those repurposed drugs were also justified by the molecular docking, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, and binding energy calculations conducted by several groups of researchers. This current work, therefore, may be able to find out important structural parameters to accelerate the COVID-19 drug discovery processes in the future.

Sepimostat mesilate (FUT-187: 6-amidino-2-naphthyl 4-[(4,5-dihydro-1H-imidazol-2-yl) amino] benzoate dimethane sulfonate) is a newly synthesized serine protease inhibitor. In the present study, the oral administration of FUT-187 inhibited stasis-induced venous thrombosis in rats. We supposed that such effect of this compound was caused by its inhibitory effect on coagulation. However, the dose of FUT-187 that was effective at inhibiting thrombosis (10 and 30 mg/kg, po) had no effect on the plasma recalcification time (PRCT), activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) and prothrombin time (PT) in rats. Therefore, we investigated the fibrinolytic activity of FUT-187 in rat plasma. The results revealed that rat plasma after FUT-187 administration exhibited increased amidolytic activity for a plasmin-, tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA)-, urokinase-type plasminogen activator (u-PA)-, factor Xa-, factor XIa- and factor XIIa-sensitive synthetic peptide substrate. On the other hand, the inhibitory effect of FUT-187 in the thrombosis model was not affected by additional treatment with epsilon-amino-n-caproic acid (EACA), a plasmin-mediated fibrinolysis inhibitor. These results suggest that even if FUT-187 enhanced fibrinolysis, it would be independent of a plasmin-mediated fibrinolytic pathway. To characterize the fibrinolytic activity, which might reduce the thrombus weight in the thrombosis model administered FUT-187, we carried out fibrinogen zymography, and clarified that FUT-187 enhanced the formation of a 20-kDa fibrinolytic fragment. Interestingly, this fragment was not affected by t-PA. Consequently, we consider that the inhibitory effect of FUT-187 on venous thrombosis model is caused by fibrinolysis, which is attributable to the 20-kDa fragment, rather than by inhibition of thrombus formation.